A couple of weeks ago I was lucky to attend a presentation by a very inspiring colleague within one of Schibsted Media Group’s companies: Lena K. Samuelsson. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Svenska Dagbladet, a Swedish daily.

She said something that you may find ordinary, but that I think is at the core of corporate challenge today: keeping your employees engaged.

She shared a story about an editorial meeting she was going to run a morning. There were plenty of topics to be dealt with and, of course, not enough time to go through all of them. So what can you do? Start the meeting and drag yourself through all items of the agenda, even though you notice that the team is not inspired at all to do so? (Well, here I’m adding something of my own imagination, because I don’t know exactly whether Ms Samuelsson’screw was inspired or not that particular morning. However, let’s pretend that was the context, okay?)

I guess the Editor-in-Chief said something like this: ‘Let’s skip the agenda, we’re not in the mood for decision making anyhow. Therefore there’s no use in sitting down here. Let’s go the Museum of Modern Art! Let’s go search for inspiration! OPEN YOUR EYES and think about something completely different. Perhaps it’ll bring us forward, fill us with energy, hey? Okay? Yeah! We’re off, hurray!’

They didn’t do the agenda. They probably did the whole meeting another day. But she managed to create a story which I’m probably not the only one remembering and sharing.

Right, then watch the video above, it’s a delicious piece of visual and emotional inspiration. Five minutes of your time.

We should all once in a while allow some fresh air and perspectives into our busy days. That counts in particularly for leaders aiming to inspire their workers to go to work full of energy when times are rough.